Doon din shows girls are a class apart

Girls to the rescue! That’s what a large section of the Doon School management is hoping for. No doubt, coeducational institutions get better grades simply because there are girls on their rolls and not because boys get smarter in their company. The all-boys Doon School is feeling the heat too as its results are not good enough to win over parents of prospective students. The management’s solution: let’s go co-ed.

This has sent shivers up the spines of some of the old boys, many of whom spend evenings talking about their schooldays like soldiers swapping war stories. Doon School has put out some big-game sociological rationales too for going co-ed. One of them is to curb “toxic masculinity”. This screenshot homily is meant to soften the core message, namely, boys must be put in their place, preferably in purdah, and let girls step in to right the ship.

Girls always do better in Classes X and XII than boys do. This trend has firmed up over time and now it’s like a law of nature. Ironically, no matter how well women might perform academically, their job status has never been equal to that of men. It is slowly climbing up both in India and in the West, but the gap is still big, especially in jobs that require skills in mathematics and engineering. This is a worldwide phenomenon.

According to the 2023 Global Gender Gap report, this is largely because subjects like science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are expensive. As most parents in countries like India finance their sons more readily, this is why girls lose out. Yet, this trend holds in the West as well. Here, we need to put an old canard to rest; girls score higher than boys in all subjects, and not just in the humanities.

That’s not all. In a study conducted by the NCERT, girls are as gifted as boys in maths and much better than them in language skills. A 2019 Delhi Government statement goes further and states that girls in its schools outperformed boys in Class X maths as well. There are many examples of girls scoring a perfect 100 per cent in maths. M Gayatri, Vanshika, Nandika and more are the Nadia Comaneci of board exams.

It is, therefore, not easy to explain why women are not as prominent in STEM-related jobs, or in higher echelons of the workforce. In this regard, the data offered by the American Association of University Professors is illustrative. The percentage of US women in STEM has gone up steadily, partly because a growing number of American men find these courses too onerous and are not signing up for them as they did before.

Even so, women remain a minority in engineering and computing sciences but figure impressively in life sciences. Unfortunately, here grants are not that many, and jobs too are not as well paid. STEM-related areas, in terms of employment and research, get more research funds and facilities than do biological sciences. Of course, women fare much better in the social sciences, where research funds and endowments are the least of all.

Men dominate wherever there is competition because they are more aggressive. In academia, for example, citations are very important and scholars are judged on the number of times their works are referred to in learned texts. Women are, generally, reticent in beating their drum but men seem to have no such hesitation. For example, men cite their own publications 70 per cent more than women do. Modesty clearly does not work.

Women also tend to speak less in board meetings, ask fewer questions and don’t crave attention. This often gives the impression that they are easy to push around. Big bosses like little bosses who are like themselves and take pride in being a role model, a kind of Jack Welch, for all occasions. Unlike men, women are more concerned about their colleagues and less committed to giving their persona a sharp and bloody edge.

It has been reported that in the US Army and Navy Academy, boys and girls are taught with different kinds of emphasis. They are not segregated in any obvious way and go through the same curriculum. At the same time, the academy believes that girls learn better when they are taught through lectures in the tried-and-tested fashion. Boys, on the other hand, absorb their lessons more when they are banded into competitive teams.

This lines up with the finding that men are quick to publicise their work and, consequently, win favour with research fund-granting agencies. Women don’t quite showcase themselves as effectively and this may be an innate feature that works against them. The Indian NGO sector too gives evidence of this because men again dominate the top posts, particularly in larger organisations where there is greater pressure for funds and contacts.

There may not be a declared prejudice against hiring women, but it works subconsciously and it is here that aggression holds the key. People are remembered and even admired for being overbearing and assertive. In an all-women utopia, speaking loudly would perhaps be a crime. We need girls to make our schools look good, but later, in the workplace we switch allegiance and prize the domineering men.

This is still a rude man’s world.

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